Looks like Kate Murphy finally got out to see the recycled scrap houses Dan Phillips makes, 8 months after a flurry of publicity launched the Phoenix Commotion into the local consciousness. Since then the Bone House has burned to the ground and risen from the ashes. Well, even if New York is behind the curve, at least they have someone writing in Houston.

It’s another sentence I never expected to hear from a builder. I nod uncertainly.

“You know how he described the two strains of culture? There’s the Apollonian culture, where everything is crisp, tidy and perfect. And there’s the Dionysian culture, where everything is passionate and organic.

“If an Apollonian is hanging a picture, he gets out his level and his measuring tape and precisely centers the picture on the wall. If a Dionysian is hanging a picture, he takes the picture, holds it up to the wall, and goes, “Hmmm. Does this look about right?”

“Our building industry is entirely Apollonian. Architects pre-think their design, specifying these ideal materials and aiming to create these idealized shapes. They’re at a disadvantage. They work off in an office, drawing blueprints. They can’t get feedback from the materials and let the designs evolve.”

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Terri Sultan's move to Long Island really let down a few people in Houston who saw her as a big talent in a backwater town, but her debut curatorial action at the Parrish Art Museum (of a show that was critically lauded in Houston) gets a beatdown in the Wall Street Journal, completely deserved for the uselessness that is Jean-Luc Mylayne;

Just because an artist gets high on his own inflated oratory is no reason a curator has to participate in a folie à deux. The museum here neither serves a public skeptical about the opacity of contemporary art nor does Mr. Mylayne any favors by framing his modest, if persistent, achievement under crushing layers of grandiloquent ­hokum.

"In a scene that would most likely appeal to the Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí, several works attributed to him are currently on display next to a disheveled tie rack at a Salvation Army Family Thrift Store in a seedy industrial neighborhood [in Houston, Texas]. The pen-and-ink drawing, crucifix sculpture and set of six lithographs are laid out in a glass case among the kind of crystal and brass tchotchkes more typically found in thrift stores. The shelves are lined with black fabric stitched with the words “I ♥ Jesus” in gold."

Menil Collection

Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009, 3 p.m.

Born near Hot Coffee, Mississippi, John Runnels received his B.F.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi. In 1985 he co-founded Mother Dog Studios, an alternative studio and exhibition space in downtown Houston. Runnels has worked as Co-Director of Buffalo Bayou ARTPARK, and with the University of Houston Sculpture Department and the City of Houston to establish an internationalartist-in-residence program. He was commissioned by the City to design a series of text-based sculptures called “Portals” along Buffalo Bayou’s Sabine Promenade. Currently, he is working on a public art project for the City of Phoenix.